Krita stand-alone installer for Windows?

[Sven Langkamp]

On Sat, Apr 10, 2010 at 11:20 AM, silvio grosso <grossosilvio at yahoo.it>wrote:

> Hi everyone,
>
> Lately, in my spare time, I have googled a bit the Krita's web-site.
> At this regard, I didn't find any updated information regarding any plan to
> have a stand-alone installer for Windows.
> Needless to say, in my opinion, this installer might concern the future
> versions of Krita (not the 2.2 or 2.3 ones).
>
> At present, you can try Krita on Windows thanks the Kde 4 installer but, in
> my honest opinion, it would be better to have a stand-alone installer such
> as other softwares provide (e.g. Gimp or MyPaint).
> For instance, at work I can't try Krita on Windows because I don't have any
> privileges as administrator to run the Kde 4 installer :-)
> On top of that, to use the Kde 4 installer, it is necessary to have an
> Internet connection which, in some circumstances, is not available :-(
> In our Science Laboratory, for example, all computers are not connected to
> Internet in order to avoid Pc Viruses (and not to waste time on
> Internet:-)).
> With Gimp it is really easy to work on Windows because you can use a
> portable version [1].
> Your computer administrator will never know about this :-)
>
> I have tried to think about the pros and cons concerning such an installer
> :-)
> These points are based on my very limited experience based on the Italian
> situation.
> As a consequence, probably, in other countries the situation is much better
> (or at least, I hope so).
>
> Here they are:
> PROS:
> - As everybody knows, most Pc users work on Windows and Mac. Like it or
> not, this is unlikely to change in the immediate future :-(
> On top of that, the great majority of artists (that is, Krita target) work
> on these platforms.
> Generally speaking, at least to my Italian knowledge, most artists don't
> have a great knowledge about programming.
> The easier is to install a software, the better will be for them to use it.
> At this regard, the Durian project is really an outstanding novelty :-)
> More precisely, most artist don't know how to program in Python or
> Script-fu and they don't care about this option.
> Otherwise, they would opt for Gimp instead of Photoshop :-)
> Men like Rolf Steinort, the German creator of the excellent video tutorials
> on Gimp [2] are, to my view, an exception. Rolf even studied Python to
> modify his pictures with Gimp :-)
>
> CONS:
> - Most Krita's developers work on Linux (e.g. Fedora, Kubuntu, OpenSuse and
> so on). As a consequence, they don't have any motivation to create such an
> installer :-)
> - Most importantly, currently, there are other MUCH important things to do:
> crash to fix, update the documentation, work on the Google Summer of code
> projects.
>
> To sum up, in my opinion, at least this year, it is probably A LOT better
> to concentrate all efforts on Linux :-)
> At home I use Windows xp and thanks to Virtualbox I use currently many
> Linux distributions (these days I am trying the second beta of Ubuntu, named
> Lucid Lynx).
> For painting, on Windows you have Gimp and MyPaint which have a nice
> stand-alone installer.
> I must confess I would appreciate the same option for Krita as well :-)
> I am aware it is not "nice" to say so but, in the end, on Windows, Gimp and
> MyPaint might be preferred thanks to their "easiest" way to install them.
>
> What do you think about my rant? :-)
>
> Best regards,
>
> Silvio
>
> [1] http://portableapps.com/apps/graphics_pictures/gimp_portable
> [2] http://meetthegimp.org/
>

Microsoft is now working on a package manager like platform:
http://blogs.msdn.com/garretts/archive/2010/03/31/the-common-opensource-application-publishing-platform-coapp.aspx
Still early development, but it will hopefully make it easier to build a
Krita version for Windows when it's done.

We would need at least one developer focusing on maintaining the installer
and fix Windows related bugs. Currently all Krita developers are working on
Linux and I don't think it's worth to reduce the stabilization efforts to
create a Windows installer. We also need some Windows users who are testing
Krita on Windows like currently on Linux. Even with the current installer
there were only very few bug reports. Seems like they are to lazy to report
problems ;)

For the moment the best way is to make Krita on Linux rock. Once Windows
users really want to have Krita there will be enough demand for people to
start working on the Windows installer or donate for the Windows installer.
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